Dancing Spoon

Curmudgeon's Easter Wine Choices

Wine About

by Eric Olson
Can I be a curmudgeon yet? I feel that way after last night's episode of "Chronicle" on TV. They featured a class being taught at Boston University that included wine and it's enjoyment, but the enjoyment part, or lack thereof, got to me a little later on.

In the episode, a woman looked intently into two glasses of wine, and said, "do you see a little more green tint in this one?” Some very serious students, with furrowed brows, stared into their glasses.

Realize that knowing more about wine could help increase your enjoyment, but the class brought up a Monty Pythonesque scene of a group of very serious people on Salem Common one spring day trying to decipher why it was so pleasant. Is it the dove's cooing, the salty tang in the air, the warmth from a rejuvenated sun? The blue sky? What makes a great day great? Everything.

Same holds true in a wine class: don't take it so seriously that you don't see the forest through the trees. You don't need a formal wine class to increase your knowledge, and you certainly don't need to be a "Master of Wine" to get full enjoyment. Lighten up. Find a laid back wine tasting like we have on Tuesdays. No furrowed brow's, just smiles, and you'll enjoy just as much as the "experts” without the pretense.

Some recommendations for this weekend’s Easter Dinners. If having lamb, then I highly suggest a French Bordeaux, from the left bank. The Chateau Aney, Haut Medoc would be perfect. A Spanish Mencia from Bierzo would work nicely such as the ‘07 Luna Beberide, or the wonderfully dry, earthy Bila Haut, from Chapoutier in the Roussillon region. You want to balance the richness of the lamb with either the tannins in the Aney, the acid in the Mencia, or the gritty dryness of the Bila Haut.

For the ham dinners a softer, fruitier red will do fine, such as the Pinot Noir from Brunel,or the J.P. Brun, Beaujolais.  For those who prefer a white with the ham, the fruity, tasty Saumur from the Loire valley would be a good match. Any way you slice it we hope your Sunday is as as pleasant as the weather is supposed to be. And don't waste time trying to decide why the day is so nice, or the wine for that matter. It just is.

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The Simplicity of Bread

Simplified Culinary

by J. Michael Wheeler
Flour, Water, Yeast
Bread: “…the culinary domestication of…hard, bland seeds.” Harold McGee.

There’re a lot of different kinds of bread. There are ashcakes, baguettes, biscuits, bloomers, Boston brown breads, ciabattas, cobs, cottage loaves, crispbreads, granary loaves, harvest loaves, milk breads, potato breads, Vienna bread, white, marble rye, and whole-wheat breads.

There are breads made with wheat, rye, corn, barley, chocolate, fruits and veggies. There are flatbreads, braided breads, round loaves, square loaves, and sticks. There are even breads made just to hold a hot dog. Walk into a boulangerie in France and witness an entire world of breads.

That Staff of Life
But what really is bread? It’s just flour (usually wheat), water, and yeast. You mix, you knead, you let it rise. Shape it. Bake it. You got bread. Simple.

What’s Inside
You really need only three ingredients to make a loaf of bread.

1. Flour Grind up an edible grain fine enough, and you’ve got flour. While bread can be made from many types of flours, the main cereal grain used for bread is wheat because of its high protein (gluten) content.

For a grain to be made into bread, it must be milled (ground) into a flour fine enough to mix into a dough. The most primitive means of milling grain is the mortar and pestle, but the grind is too course for bread and is more suited to porridges and gruels.

2. Leavening You could mix flour and water together, shape it into a thin disk, and bake it; you’ll end up with a flatbread. To make a risen loaf, the “loaf of bread” loaf, you’ll need to add a rising agent such as yeast.

Yeasts are almost magical little single-celled plants. They’re a tiny, little fungus. In fact, one teaspoon contains hundreds of millions of yeast cells. The magic is that they make breads rise, grape juice turn to wine, and grains and water turn to beer.

And here’s the magic that’s important in bread making: yeast breathes air and exhales carbon dioxide, just like we do. Given a lot of air and some food (like flour), yeast grows fast and produces a lot of carbon dioxide. And it’s this gas that makes bread rise.

3. Water And water.

Apple Cider Red Stag Stew

Ordinary Out of the

OOO by Kate Krukowski Gooding
Apple Cider Red Stag Stew
Large chunks of venison, vegetables, and apples appeal in the presentation and taste of this venison stew because it screams of winter comfort and flavor. You’ve seen how the apple cider container expands when it begins to ferment: it takes on a roundish shape? That is the perfect time to use it in this stew! The bite of the apple cider with the spices takes your palate on a new journey. I say it tastes like autumn in Maine. Bon Appetit!

Ingredients
Serves 2-4

1 pound venison stew, cut into 1 ½ ‘chunks
1 tablespoon Blood Orange olive oil (or fruity olive oil)
1 tablespoon butter
1 onion, quartered and 2 inch slices
1 tablespoon arrowroot (or flour)
¼ teaspoon mace
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup game stock
1 cup apple cider, a little on the edge of fermentation
2 bay leaves
5 allspice berries
3 whole cloves
3 carrots, sliced
2 apples, peeled, cored and cut in large chunks

Directions

1. Brown venison in oil and butter on high-heat.
2. Add onions, reduce heat and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. 
3. Add Add arrowroot, mace and salt and stir. Add stock and apple cider; bring to boil for 2 minutes.
4. Add spices, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour.
5. Add carrots and apples and simmer for 30 more minutes.

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You can find Kate Gooding's book, Black Fly Stew - Wild Maine Recipes at Foodie's Emporium! Click here. Kate has published three cookbooks: Wild Maine Recipes and Simple Gourmet Lamb with Side Dishes and Wine Pairings. She is currently is working on her one in the Black Fly Stew series – which carries and an international flair.

More information at www.blackflystew.com

And visit Foodie's Emporium for Unique Kitchen items!

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Manly Cupcakes

Trends Food

by J. Michael Wheeler
Butch Bakery
Rum & Coke, Mojito, Beer Run, B-52, Driller, Jackhammer, Tailgate: Dude, muscle your way up to the counter and grab a cupcake?

Yeah, these ain’t your granny’s cute little fussy cupcakes, these are MANLY CUPCAKES made for MEN! The Butch Bakery in Manhattan has a mission:

Our objective is simple. We’re men. Men who love cupcakes. Not the Frilly Pink-Frosted-Sprinkles-and-Unicorns kind of cupcakes. We make MANLY CUPCAKES for MANLY MEN.

David Arrick, formerly an attorney for a major Wall Street law firm, felt it was time to combine a masculine aesthetic to a traditionally cute product: the cupcake. When a magazine article mentioned that cupcakes were a combination of everything "pink, sweet, cute, and magical,” he felt it was time to take action, and butch it up.  He decided to create a company where "Butch meets Buttercream.” No "golf tee" cupcakes, or "baseball" cupcakes, but products that guys would love.

  WE BUILD A BETTER CUPCAKE. See plans below.

Butch cupcakes are topped with a macho chocolate disk like the Woodland Camo, Wood Grain, Houndstooth, Plaid, Checkerboard, or Marble. They’ve got Dude-flavors like Beer Run, a chocolate beer cake with beer-infused buttercream topped with crushed pretzels, or the Driller, a maple cake loaded with milk-chocolate ganache and topped with, what else, crumbled bacon!

Butch Bakery cupcakes are made to order in New York City commercial kitchen, and delivered directly to homes or offices within Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.  Butch Bakery plans to open a commercial bakery storefront by Spring, 2010.

Here Dude, have a Mojito (rum-soaked lime cake with mint white-chocolate ganache). Butch Bakery.

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